WHITE HOUSE WATCH
Analyze Diss
by Ryan Lizza
Post date 08.04.06 | Issue date 08.14.06
It's not too much to say that Representative Mark Kennedy owes his political career to George W. Bush. When the Minneapolis corporate executive left the boardroom to embark on a quixotic bid for Congress in 2000, Bush's coattails carried him to a 155-vote victory. Once ensconced in Washington, Kennedy thrived as a Bush conservative in the salad days of post-September 11 GOP dominance. His fealty to the president was repaid in 2002 with the ultimate campaign gift: footage of Kennedy and Bush walking solemnly down the White House colonnade as the young congressman imparted some inaudible wisdom to the commander-in-chief. A Kennedy campaign ad that fall featured the scene with the voiceover, "I'm Congressman Mark Kennedy. I've stood with President Bush on the war against terrorism." It worked. Initially considered vulnerable, Kennedy won the race with a knockout 57 to 35 percent. In 2004, Bush's coattails helped lift Kennedy to victory once more. Bush won the district with 57 percent of the vote, his best showing in the state, while Kennedy lagged behind with 54 percent.
But those coattails have gotten an awful lot shorter in the last two years. Today, Kennedy is running like a candidate trying to shake off a disreputable past--in this case, one as a Bush Republican. And he's not alone. The districts and states that represent the best pick-up opportunities for Democrats, almost by definition, are the ones where Bush fatigue is strongest. So, after three elections of embracing Bush, GOP candidates across the country are facing a new challenge: perfecting the art of dissing Bush.
Flip on the tube in Minnesota these days and you'll meet the new Mark Kennedy, now running for the U.S. Senate. His latest campaign commercial features not Bush but Kennedy's mom. And Kennedy's dad. And Kennedy's three brothers. And Kennedy's wife. And Kennedy's four children. And Kennedy's dead ancestors (pictures of them, anyway). Rather than reminding voters of his experience serving in the House during six of the most consequential years in American history, Kennedy explains to Minnesotans that he's a certified public accountant.
Banished are any mentions of the president, the war on terrorism, or the GOP. Instead, the ad features a shot of Kennedy dressed ridiculously in a birthday hat and party blower to emphasize his daughter's on-camera testimony that he's "just not much of a party guy" and "doesn't do whatever the party says to." (She's right, though only barely: Kennedy opposed Bush's position only 8 percent of the time since coming to Washington.) When a reporter recently asked Kennedy why the scrupulously nonpartisan Congressional Quarterly described him as a "loyal Bush supporter," Kennedy seemed to regard the phrase as a political smear: "The attack on me is that I'm a lap dog of the president.... To have an organization as reputable as CQ fall into that trap, I just don't know."
Missouri Senator Jim Talent is also unveiling a newfound independent streak. Running in a special election in 2002, Talent had done Kennedy one better, scoring not only footage from the president but audio, too. "The best person running for the United States Senate is Jim Talent," Bush announced in a campaign ad. "The man doesn't need a focus group or a poll to tell him what to say." Perhaps. Though it seems that the GOP's cratering polls may have something to do with the new tack Talent is trying out for his reelection race. Bush is out, as is partisanship in all its forms. "Most people don't care if you're red or blue, Republican or Democrat," declares a new Talent ad, wishfully. In a "director's commentary" about the spot (I kid you not) that the senator provides on his website, he brags of passing legislation with Democrats including Chris Dodd, Charles Schumer, and Dianne Feinstein. No mention of the guy who signed it all into law.
Dissing Bush can be trickier than it might seem at first. There is, after all, the little matter of fund-raising, where the president, despite his sagging popularity, is still the party heavyweight. The trick for vulnerable GOP candidates is to somehow get Bush money without being in any way associated with Bush or the other radioactive members of his administration--a predicament that is tying Republicans into pretzels from coast to coast. The most common maneuver is for candidates to invent excuses to arrive late at their own fundraisers--or not at all. In March, New Jersey Senate candidate Tom Kean conveniently showed up at a buck-raking event in Newark just moments after the vice president had departed. His explanation? He was stuck in traffic. Virginia House member Thelma Drake was more creative. In May, when Bush dropped into Virginia Beach to raise $500,000 for her campaign, she didn't bother to show up at all. How could she, after all, when her vote was needed in Washington on a critical piece of legislation? (The bill in question passed 395-0.) Washington Senate candidate Mike McGavick at least had the decency to come up with an unimpeachable scheduling conflict when Bush showed up in the Seattle suburbs for a GOP fund-raiser: He was attending his son's high school graduation in Pennsylvania.
But no good trick lasts forever. Skipping out on fundraisers when Bush is in town became a common enough practice that Democrats started pointing out the ploy in local media outlets, making it more trouble than it was worth. The solution some candidates have landed on is to endure the shame of sharing a stage with the president of the United States and, after he leaves, to criticize him subtly but pointedly. House candidates Rick O'Donnell of Colorado and Heather Wilson of New Mexico have taken this course, smiling alongside Bush as he collects campaign checks for them one day and running ads trumpeting their willingness to defy Republican leaders in Washington the next.
For some, the best approach may be simply to ask Bush to stay away. When the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently unearthed the fact that Bush would be raising dough for David Reichert, who represents an increasingly Democratic district in Washington state, the news generated a wave of negative coverage about his coziness with the White House. When Reichert joined the pariah-in-chief at the event anyway, it seemed to do him more harm than good: The visit pumped anti-Bush money into the coffers of his opponent, who ended up out-raising him for the quarter. Indeed, the event provided so much fodder to tie Reichert to Bush that it's widely seen as the reason Reichert reversed his position on stem-cell research last month.
Given that 55 to 60 percent of Americans believe the president is doing a bad job, Bush-bashing is a surprisingly flexible tool, able to woo constituencies from across the ideological spectrum. While Mark Kennedy disses the president in order to win over fussy Minnesota independents, other Republicans badmouth Bush to woo conservatives angry about his immigration plan. Pennsylvania Representative Jim Gerlach tried this approach in a recent ad, explaining, "The president wants a guest-worker program that may lead to amnesty for illegal immigrants. That's sending the wrong message at the wrong time." Arizona's J.D. Hayworth has embraced this line in his latest book, complaining that Bush is "disturbingly vague and indecisive" on immigration.
In New England, by contrast, Bush-bashing is all about courting liberal voters. From the endangered Republicans in Connecticut to the GOP candidate for an open seat in Vermont, publicly breaking with the president is not so much a stunt as a way of life. Connecticut Representative Chris Shays has accused the Bush administration of hiding the costs of the war in Iraq and blasted the president for his stem-cell veto--and that's just in the last few weeks. Meanwhile, up in Vermont, part of what The Washington Post recently dubbed the "impeachment belt"--because of the region's enthusiasm for kicking Bush out of office--House candidate Martha Rainville told a reporter that the president's "time is better spent on other things" than visiting the state.
That may not be a terribly surprising statement coming from a Republican running for the seat vacated by socialist Bernie Sanders. What is surprising about this year's orgy of GOP Bush-bashing is how manufactured and artificial it all is. On the surface, the revolt against the president suggests that the storied discipline of his political machine has broken down. In fact, it means nothing of the kind: By instructing candidates to "localize" their races as much as possible, the party committees have essentially green-lighted the presidential diss as a campaign strategy. Which raises an interesting possibility: After six years of futile attempts by Democrats, could it be that Republicans are the ones who have finally figured out how to win elections by bashing Bush?
(though note the twist in the tail).
No, you dont say! And that on "The Democrats Gloat Thread"! What next? Will the posters on the Bush Supporters Thread relinquish their exemplary objective perspective in response? This is too exciting!
